Before the Seven Years' War, Austria was also a feudal monarchy, with the monarch running the country and the nobility at the top of the hierarchy.

Maria. Empress Theresia succeeded to the throne, causing the War of the Austrian Succession, and Empress Theresia retained her position as monarch, but lost a large amount of territory, especially the Silesian industrial region in central Germany, allowing Prussia to establish itself as a European power.

As a result of her continued losses to Prussia on the battlefield, Empress Theresia undertook drastic reforms. The introduction of compulsory education is one aspect of the reform. The biggest political reform was the direct dispatch of officials from the central government to local governments to take charge of tax collection and other work, thus strengthening the central government's ability to collect taxes. In fact, what was done was during the time of Louis XIV, a few decades later than in France, in order to strengthen military power and complete the centralization of power.

Queen Theresia died in 1780, leaving behind a centralized Habsburg Empire. At this time, the popular political ideology in Europe was enlightened autocracy, advocating freedom of belief, freedom of speech and other liberalism, but Empress Theresia established strict censorship and supported religious forces.

Her successor, Joseph II, succeeded to the throne and immediately began reforms, issuing the Freedom of Belief Decree and reorganizing monasteries on religious matters. Under this decree and related laws, the Protestant Lutheran and Calvinists and the Orthodox Church were given a status of essentially equal status with the Catholic Church, and Jews were allowed to pursue a variety of occupations and attend universities. Maria. Theresia believed that Protestantism was heretical and that the Jews were the embodiment of the Antichrist, while Joseph II respected other sects of Christianity, believed that Jews were beneficial to the state, and that the Austrian Catholic Church should not be subordinate to the Holy See.

Joseph's second reform was against serfdom. He did not completely abolish serfdom, but greatly improved the status of the peasantry. In 1781 he issued an edict allowing peasants to move out of their villages, to fend for themselves, and to choose their own spouses without the permission of their lords, giving them the freedom to move. Abolish the system of forced labor for the children of peasants. Initially, these liberal decrees were only applicable to the Bohemian crown domains, and a few years later they were extended to the rest of Austria, and finally, to Hungary, which could not carry out most of the reforms during the time of Queen Theresia.

In 1789 Joseph also declared that all land, whether owned by nobles or commoners, was to be taxed at 12 per cent of its appraised value, and that the rent paid by the peasants to the lords and the services rendered thereafter were to be paid in cash, and that the total amount of the peasants' income from their production should not exceed 17 per cent. These two measures abolished the privilege of the nobility not to pay taxes and protected the interests of the peasants.

The nobility and serfs were the two ends of the scale, and in Joseph's time, by restricting the nobility and protecting the interests of the peasants, Austrian serfdom was weakened, but some remnants were retained.

Joseph was also open to speech, at first he hoped that the liberals would attack the conservative religious forces, and then create an atmosphere of public opinion for his Reformation, but he found that under the freedom of speech, the liberals attacked him first and foremost as the emperor, so he began to enforce censorship again.

Joseph later died during the war with the Ottoman Empire.

After the death of Joseph II, he was succeeded by his younger brother Leopold II (reigned 1790~1792). After Leopold ascended the throne and ended the war against the Ottoman Empire, Leopold II implemented his own reforms step by step.

Leopold's reforms were aimed at balancing the interests of the new class, starting with government reforms, such as increasing the representation of the lower classes in provincial assemblies and bringing the police under the rule of law. Leopold hoped to create a force against the elite and support his enlightened autocracy by including representatives of all classes in the provincial councils. Unfortunately, Leopold died after only two years as emperor, and his successor was faced with an ongoing war with France.

Beginning with Queen Theresia, three successive generations of monarchs sought to carry out reforms that weakened feudal power and strengthened state power while protecting the interests of the middle and lower classes, and such reforms could have succeeded if they had been sustained. But the flames of the Revolution burned all this.

After the fall of Napoleon, Austria began to enter the Metternich era.

Metternich was a veteran politician, but not a reformer, and his reign was devoted to maintaining the vast territory of the Austrian Empire and suppressing separatist forces, such as restricting the independence of Hungary and suppressing the uprising in Italy. Politically, Metternich was conservative, economically liberal, and a realist.

During this period, Austria developed rapidly, and in the 1820s there was a period of sustained industrial development, with pig iron, coal, cotton textiles, wool textiles, and grain production all increasing substantially, even higher than in the Prussian-dominated countries of the North in the Zollfold. Restrictions on new businesses, especially commercial enterprises, are lifted in their entirety.

In terms of transportation, the construction of railways and the development of water transportation, the first railway on the European continent appeared between Linz and Boudweiss in the Austrian Empire, but it was a horse-drawn carriage railway from the banks of the Danube to the banks of the Mordaw, not a steam railway, connecting the Danube and the Elbe system. Later, the Vienna Steam Railway began to flourish, connecting major cities. Steamships also began to exist on the Danube, and inland waterway transport developed.

The improvement of transportation has greatly improved the division of labor, and economy. Markets for agricultural products are expanding, agriculture is shifting to cash crops, cash crops such as sugar beet and flax are grown in large quantities, and products such as wheat, vegetables, grapes and livestock are increasingly being supplied to the commercial market rather than being self-sufficient.

But the social system in the countryside has remained conservative.

Especially in the Hungarian plains, where the agricultural base was the best, the Magyar aristocracy ruled the rural society, and in the time of Empress Theresia refused to reform, and the conservative forces were strong.

In short, in this revolution that spread throughout Europe, the Austrian Empire was a microcosm, and he appeared in all the problems that other countries had, and he also appeared in the problems that other countries did not have.

Austria had the question of freedom for the French, Austria for Italy, Austria for independence, and Austria for the reform of Prussian serfdom.

As a result, other countries were able to quickly restore stability through reforms, while Austria could not solve all the problems that erupted at once. In an instant, Hungary and Bohemia established their own regimes, and the Austrian emperor left Vienna.

And at this time, foreign enemies also took advantage of the invasion, Austria's Italian territory of the Kingdom of Vinicia revolted, and the local Italians demanded independence, which was unacceptable, because the northern Italian territories, including Lombardy and Venice, were the richest regions of the Austrian Empire, and the taxes were higher than those of the Austrian Duchy, and the abandonment of this place was a great blow to the Austrian Empire.

So Austria chose to suppress, and the repression caused the displeasure of the only Italian state of Italy, which was the king, and the Kingdom of Sardinia declared war on Austria in favor of the independence of Venesia or tried to unite the Kingdom of Venesia in favor of it.

Internal and external troubles, just half a year ago, the Austro-Hungarian Empire was still a powerful country that Britain and China needed to woo, and half a year later, the weak frame collapsed, and no one even dared to guarantee whether the Austrian Empire could survive at this time.

Austria was in all sorts of troubles, Prussia, which was fighting for German hegemony with Austria, was also in trouble, Berlin also had a revolution, the middle class and the workers and peasants gathered in the palace square to demand freedom of the press, convene joint conferences, organize people's self-defense groups, Prussian king Frederick William IV was forced to partially agree to the people's demands, the uprising was victorious, and the king took off his hat to mourn the martyrs who died in the uprising in the eyes of the masses. The liberal cabinet in Berlin was formed, and a Constituent Assembly was convened. The king declared that he wanted a federal German empire with an elected parliament and freedom of speech and the press.

As the Kingdom of Bavaria in the German Confederation after Austria and Prussia, the capital of Munich also broke out in the revolution, students, workers, and citizens jointly occupied the armory, demanded the resignation of King Ludwig I of Bavaria and his favorite concubine "Lola's cabinet", and the emperor was forced to form a new cabinet composed of representatives of the middle class.

Thousands of liberal leaders gathered in Frankfurt to convene the Frankfurt National Assembly, a largely middle-class parliament that hoped to prepare a federal constitution with representatives in favor of a Greater Germany ruled by the Austrian Empire and the annexation of Austria and Bohemia to Germany; There were representatives who supported Little Germany, which was ruled by Prussia, excluding any Austrian territory.

The parliament itself was noisy, but it reflected a problem: nationalism was always an important issue in this complex revolution, in which peoples like Hungary and Bohemia sought independence or autonomy, while peoples like Germany and Italy sought unity!

Modern nationalism has developed to new heights in Europe, breaking through national and geographical constraints, and this nationalism, coupled with the complex territorial question, will become the next source of European chaos after the question of serfdom!

There is only one country that is special, and its national question is not the main problem, nor is the problem of serfdom, but the unity and division of the country are the main problems.

After the Napoleonic Wars, Switzerland was co-opted as a state and granted permanent neutrality status. But the cantons enjoyed a high degree of autonomy, each with its own laws, currency, postal services, weights and measures, and the army, and the inhabitants of each canton regarded the inhabitants of the other cantons as nationals of other states, and the idea of a unified Switzerland had not yet been born.

Civil liberties were almost non-existent, and the differences between the different religions were increasingly widespread, leading to the formation in 1845 of a union of separatists in the Catholic cantons, consisting of Lucerne, Uri, Schwyz, Untwalden, Zug, Fribourg, and Valais. The Federal Parliament has always wanted the dissolution of this independent union, because the Federal Parliament considers the independent union established by several states to be incompatible with the spirit of the Federation. Having been under pressure from outside powers, the Confederation could do nothing against the Catholic Union, and could only watch as they struck a divide within the Swiss Confederation as a state within a state.

After the Catholic Church of France and Austria fell into chaos, the Confederation issued an ultimatum to the League, demanding that they be dissolved, and then all the cantons would be represented to create a constitution that would integrate the laws of the cantons and maintain the integrity of the country. The League refused, and as a result of which a civil war broke out. The liberal Confederation won, and the Confederation of Independence was dissolved. Then the 1845 Constitution was enacted, and Switzerland became a modern state.

The main problem of Europe has never been the problem of these small countries, it has always been the problem of the big countries of France, Russia and Austria.

Now that France, Prussia, and Austria are in trouble, what is happening to Russia, which was on the verge of collapse in the Great War a few years ago?